Noam Chomsky on China, artificial intelligence, and the 2024 presidential election

#interview

Interview with Noam Chomsky in 2023. YouTube video was shared on 2023-04-17.

Video description

Noam Chomsky joins me for a third time on the show to discuss in depth the 2024 elections, the fentanyl crisis, the Russia-Ukraine War, and the looming threat of WWIII, and AI. This is the third time that Chomsky joins me on the show, In the first edition, we covered language, philosophy, and how to know oneself in this world. The second edition covered the Russia-Ukraine War, and the third edition will cover:

Download the full transcript now: throughconversations.ck.page/74977804d7

FIRST INTERVIEW WITH CHOMSKY:    • Noam Chomsky: Kno...  
SECOND INTERVIEW WITH CHOMSKY:    • Noam Chomsky: on ...

Highlights

00:00 Intro
00:52 Chomsky’s Perspective on the 2024 Presidential Election
04:15 The State of American Politics
25:03 Mexican Cartels, Guns, and The Fentanyl Crisis
34:40 The Russia-Ukraine War
51:40 Chomsky on Artificial Intelligence
57:40 How To Bring Back Optimism In Our Society

Transcript

Introduction

Alex Levy: Hello everyone and welcome to this special edition of the Thorough Conversations podcast. I am joined for a third time by Professor Noam Chomsky, who does not need any introduction. He's a previous guest on this show, and our listeners are excited about this conversation. Thank you again, Professor, for joining me.

Noam Chomsky: I'm very pleased to be with you.

Alex Levy: This conversation comes at a time where there are a lot of moving parts in our society, and your voice has always been one that can steer us into a more thoughtful and engaged discussion on how to improve our society. Our listeners are interested in hearing your thoughts on the upcoming 2024 presidential election. What are your thoughts on the key issues that will shape this election?

Noam Chomsky: There are two key issues that shape everything, including the election. One is the potential for destroying organized human life on Earth. There are two ways in which we are racing to do that. One is the increasing threat of nuclear war, both in Europe and in Asia. The second is by heating the globe to the point where much of it will be unlivable. We just heard a couple of weeks ago from the IPCC, the international scientific monitors, their most dire report, without cutting any corners, about where we now stand.

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that we have to radically cut the use of fossil fuels, beginning now, aiming for termination a couple of decades from now. If not, we pass irreversible tipping points where there will be a steady decline to the essentially destruction of organized human life on Earth. The other possibility is we do it quickly with a nuclear war.

Going back to the 2024 election, as in every other major decision in our lives, these are the top issues of concern. There are other issues: will American democracy survive in any form? A rather serious question, it's not a joke. Other democracies are in deep trouble. Read the newspaper this morning: in India, the head of the opposition party, Rahul Gandhi, was just tossed into jail.

Part of Prime Minister Modi's effort is to dismantle India's democracy and install a racist Hindu ethnocracy in its place. It's one case. We can talk about others. The United States is finally the most important because of its extraordinary power and influence in the world, so that's at stake. And we can continue; there are lots of other things. So, I think we could have said for each of the recent elections that it's the most important yet. That was correct. We also drew the next one.

The current state of American politics

Alex Levy: It's really interesting, and you touch on many crucial points that I want to get into our conversation today. In terms of electing someone, there are a lot of names that are coming around, more in the angle of the Republican Party, which are Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Donald Trump, and some that are potentially running, which are DeSantis and Mike Pompeo.

And also, in terms of the Democratic Party, it seems that there's speculation that Biden may not run or perhaps he's not leaning towards running, or maybe he will run, but these are all the questions that I have for you. What are your thoughts on the Republican candidates? Is there anyone that you would be interested in having as the next president? And also, what are your thoughts on a potential re-election of President Joe Biden?

Chomsky: The Republican organization is not a political party in the traditional sense. It has been turning into something quite different for several decades. In fact, I agree with the comments of the political analysts of the American Enterprise Institute.

Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein say that the Republicans have become what they call a radical insurgency that has abandoned the procedures of normal parliamentary politics. If you look at international rankings of its attitudes and commitments, it ranks alongside the far-right parties in Europe with neo-fascist origins.

The party is now pretty much in the pocket of Donald Trump. If you look at polls, he is overwhelmingly popular. That's the end result of a long period that can be traced back to Richard Nixon, in which the party recognized, back at that time when it was an authentic political party, the Republicans and the Democrats, whatever you thought about them, they pretty much overlapped in modes of procedure and attitudes and so on. The Republicans were the more pro-business of the two business parties in the United States.

The United States is basically a one-party state. The business party has two factions called Democrats and Republicans. The Republicans were the more dedicated pro-business party. Richard Nixon, an intelligent strategist, understood that the Republicans cannot win elections on their actual programs, the programs of strong support for the business world, for the ownership class, for investors from banks, and so on. They can't get votes that way, so he recognized that what the Republicans ought to do is to shift attention away from their social-economic policies to something else, what are now called cultural issues.

With Nixon, it was what was called the southern strategy - let's draw Southern Democrats to the Republican Party by barely concealed racism. By the mid-1970s, Republican strategists recorded polls over particular recognition that if the Republicans pretended, I stress pretend, to be opposed to abortion, they could pull in the huge Evangelical bloc then being politicized for the first time and the northern Catholic vote. So, they all switched on a dime. George H.W Bush, Reagan had been strongly what's now called pro-choice, suddenly became what's an uncle for life, almost instantly, other leaders too. So, that became a plank of the Republican Party. Later on, love of guns, later on, something else, anything to keep people's attention away from the socioeconomic policies which are very harmful for their own constituency. So, you have to shift it.

With Newt Gingrich when he took over the house, this became almost an open war. He said, "We have to declare a war on the Democrats." And since then, it's been a steady decline in this direction. Donald Trump, who's a very good showman, was able to mobilize these ideas, these tendencies, very successfully. So, you look at his legislative program, one achievement, a major tax cut for the rich and the corporate sector, stabbing everyone else in the back. But you don't talk about that. What you talk about is the great replacement, Democrats being sadistic pedophiles, or anything else, just kind of don't look behind the curtain. And that's been...you can understand the success there has been a period of 45 years of what amounts to savage class war against the general population. It's bipartisan, led by Republicans, started by Ronald Reagan, followed by Bill Clinton, Obama, and it's called neoliberalism.

Which has a technical definition, the definition of neoliberalism, you look it up in the dictionary and it says something about free markets, free enterprise, but that's not what it is. It's basically class war. Yes, there is deregulation, that is free enterprise, but there's a footnote: deregulation leads to financial crashes very quickly, in fact, it started right away in the Reagan Administration, Continental, no my bill, and homing savings and home prices.

The business world understands that the way it works is, get deregulation, we move towards monopolization quite naturally, we make risky investments, make a ton of money, and when it all crashes, the state comes in and the friendly taxpayer bails out the business, and we're seeing it right now, unfortunately, but it happens over and over. So, it's a market bailout economy for the very rich and many other things that corporations do.

Reagan and also Thatcher is associated in this, their first acts were to attack the labor movement and undermine it severely. That made good sense, the labor movement is the main way in which people can defend themselves in a vicious class war, so you have to eliminate the defenses. They used illegal means, but it didn't matter.

This opened the door to the corporate sector to move in with massive efforts at strike working, undermining labor laws, and much of it illegal, but when you control the criminal state, it doesn't matter, and many other things like this. Go through the details, like for example, real wages for male workers are basically in 1979. Productivity has increased, and goes to very few hands. We even have measures of it, the Rand Corporation, super respectable, did a study of what they call politely, the transfer of wealth from the working class and the middle class, lower 90 percent of the population, transfer wealth from them to the top one percent.

Their estimate over the 40 years of class war, they don't call it that, is about 50 trillion dollars. That's quite an impressive class war, to steal 50 trillion dollars from the working class and the middle class. And in order to get away with it, you have to shift attention away from the policies and go to cultural issues. Well, one of the effects of the class war has been to shatter the social order.

People live with a precarious existence - very little wealth if you're an Afro-American, virtually no wealth. Precarious jobs, and maybe it'll be there tomorrow, maybe it won't. Associations dissolved, the people are alone, atomized, angry. Properly angry, resentful, rightly resentful, distrust institutions greatly. Institutions don't work for them. Very fertile to reign for demagogues.

You get it accomplished, megalomaniac narcissist like Donald Trump, who's a good showman. He can mobilize people on this basis, and from their point of view, it's understandable.

The Republican organization now relies pretty heavily on a rural vote. Take a walk through a rural town, see what it looks like. Where's the industry? It's gone. Clinton insisted on global trade policies which were designed to harm the American working class and to benefit rich entrepreneurs and investors. Called NAFTA World Trade Organization, it's not free markets, highly protectionist. It's one reason why drugs are out of sight in the United States because of the highly protectionist elements of the investor rights agreement called free trade agreements or in our propaganda system.

So the industry's gone. Stores are shuttered, homes are shuttered, young people are leaving. There's nothing there, desperation. In fact, there's even an increase in mortality in the white working class, an increase in mortality unheard of in societies outside of war.

What's happening here is what economists call "deaths of despair." Well, you grab onto something. Maybe it'll be the church, maybe it'll be the Great Replacement, the Democrats are bringing in immigrants to undermine the white race. Almost half of Republicans believe that the Democratic Party is run by sadistic pedophiles who are trying to groom children. One after another, crazy beliefs, and you can understand it when your life is being taken away. You grab onto something.

Well, it used to be things like, say, in the 1930s when I was growing up, you grabbed onto the labor unions which were then growing, developing. My own family, first-generation working class, things were pretty harsh, much worse than today objectively, but it was a hopeful period I remembered very well. "We're going to get together, we're going to get out of this together, we'll work together." There was a moderately sympathetic Administration, and labor unions were not just wages, they were cultural institutions, classes, adult education meetings, discussions, concerts, even a week in the park in the Pocono Mountains for my aunts who were unemployed seamstresses. It was a whole way of life gone. Reagan was a vicious, brutal killer and racist, understood, or at least as advisors understood, "we ought to wipe this out and that," and it's been the same.

Pretty soon Clinton joined in in his own way. Well, that's where we are now. We have an election coming up with one party, which is for quite rational reasons dedicated to undermining this democracy.

They can't survive in a democratic system. You can't have a party whose sole commitment in policy is to enrich the very rich in the corporate sector and stab everyone else in the back. Can't run on those programs. So let's undermine democracy. Let's bring up issues like Democratic pedophiles and the Great Replacement, whatever crazy idea comes along next, but just turn people's attention to that, and again, given the collapse, the attack on the social order, this is not too hard to do. That's one party. The other party is split. The Democratic Party, which still functions as a political party, is pretty much split between Clintonian party management, which is part of the general assault with a slightly softer touch.

And the sort of Sanders movement, which has a strong popular base, not much of a representation in Congress, and they are in the American system doctrinal system they're called radical. In fact, by international standards, they're mildly centrist.

In fact, one of the editors of the London Financial Times, the major business journal, by no means the radical journal, one of them equipped half-jokingly, only half-jokingly, that if Bernie Sanders was in Germany, he could be running for the conservative Christian Democrat Party. If you look at it, it's not false. Take a look at his programs: universal healthcare, free higher education, child care. Have that everywhere. They have it in Germany, Mexico, France, take up Brazil and look around the world. So these are mildly social democratic policies. In the United States, it is considered very radical.

The United States has a very class-conscious business class. This goes way back. That's why we have a very violent labor history, extremely violent, surprising conservative Europeans. And now, even simple things like maternal care, care for a woman after childbirth, the only country that doesn't have it is the United States and a couple of Pacific Islands. Here, it is considered a very radical idea. Right now in France, people are out in the streets demonstrating Macron's version of neoliberalism, raising pension age. Now here, nobody understands that. Of course, everybody wants to work like a maniac until the last minute. Well, in France, they still want to have a decent life.

You raise the pension age, who are you attacking? Working people, not affluent professionals, not people like me, not people who work in offices. We live longer. If you're a construction worker, police officer, you're not going to live very long. It's a hard life. Raise the pension age, you have less of a retirement to enjoy yourself or do whatever you want. So in France, that's fighting issues.

Here, it's almost even unimaginable. Raise the pension age to 64. What's that about? In Europe and America, work about a month or six weeks longer than Europeans because of the savage character of the Conservative Business run system. It's not in the dreams. You go back to the 1930s, my childhood. The United States led the way in social democracy. Europe was descending into fascism.

The New Deal was offering hope for social democracy. It's later picked up in Europe, so it's not a law of nature. And these are basically questions of the character of class war. The essence of it, you're not allowed to talk about that in the United States. There's no such thing as class, no such thing. Just everybody's middle class, whatever that's supposed to mean. Well, it's not the case. Now, there are people who give orders or people who follow, that's class. If you look at the way this has developed over the years, yes, there's been constant class war, taking different forms.

Last 40 years, it's been pretty savage, not just in the United States, but in various forms elsewhere. In France, you see the forms, right? Like during that cross period in office, this prime minister, you look at the record, the rich have become richer, the workers have become stagnated or become poor. That's a mild form of the class war called neoliberalism. And the worst victims, those who have suffered worse, are the globals themselves. They were subjected to IMF structural adjustment programs which had devastating effects in Latin America, Africa, elsewhere. And the weaker are the ones who suffer most, naturally.

Mexican Cartels, Guns, and The Fentanyl Crisis

Levy: Professor, thank you for that answer and there's a lot there that we can unpack and you mentioned right now you mentioned Latin America and my next question was regarding what we're seeing with a fentanyl crisis and with what we're seeing in Mexico with the cartels. There's been a lot of concern with how to solve this challenge, and I kept asking myself, what would Professor Chomsky say? How can we really tackle this challenge? And if there has to be a solution, which one should it be? Should it be a military intervention, which I'm sure you wouldn't agree on, led by the U.S.? Or would it justify the killing of Americans? Would it justify us coming and helping the Mexican military cope with the cartels? Or how do you think we can solve the rising violence that's happening south of our border

Chomsky: Well, let me give you an unserious answer and a serious answer. There's a saying in Mexico, which I'm sure you're familiar with, that Mexico is too far from God and too close to the United States. Okay, since it's too close to the United States, why not adopt the US way of dealing with these things? In the United States, there is a major issue: the fossil fuel companies and the banks are destroying the possibilities for life on Earth. So, how do we deal with it? We try to bribe them to be nicer people. You look at the recent so-called inflation act, basically a climate act. What it basically does is say, "Please, fossil fuel companies, be nicer. We'll pay you to be nicer. We'll give you incentives to be nicer. We'll offer you more fossil fuel fields to exploit. We'll give you subsidies." Alright, so how should Mexico deal with the cartels? Bribe them. Say, "Here, we'll pay you off if you stop killing people, if you listen to the United States." It's too close to the United States, why not try that? Of course, that's ludicrous. Is it more ludicrous than what we're doing here? No.

Now let's talk about a serious answer. What's the source of the drug problem? It's in the United States. Where do the guns come from for the Mexican cartels? From where I'm sitting right now in Arizona, but I don't know which end of a gun to hold. But I could go into a gun store, buy a rifle, and hand it over to the local cartel representative. Now they can take it to Mexico and start murdering people. The problem is primarily in the United States. That's where the drug problem is, that's where the majority of the guns are coming from. So the problem has to be addressed here. It's the criminalization of drugs and the harsh drug policies.

No, there's a history to this. In fact, it goes back to Richard Nixon, except that in his case, the Republican party still hadn't moved off to total savagery. So Nixon did impose some kind of drug laws, but they had a rational humane element to them. One part of the drug laws was prevention and treatment. That's gone. There are studies, again, around Corporation and others have done studies on what ways work for cutting down drugs. Well, they studied just in terms of cost-effectiveness, the least cost, the most effect. Turns out the most effective by far is prevention and treatment. Worse than that is criminalization, put them in jail. Worse than that is border controls. The worst of all is chemical warfare, what we call fumigation, so destroy the crops in Colombia, including drugs but all other crops as well, so you create insurgencies and terrorism and so on. That's the worst of all, that's the ranking. Now take a look at the funding. It's the opposite. Most funding goes to the worst, least funding, in fact, practically none goes to the best. Well, it's another form of class war.

In fact, the drug war has been an effective way of removing what are some of them is called the dangerous classes. In fact, if you look back over the history of drugs, it's the way it's always been.

Take prohibition, you know, back in the women's temperance league and so on, but what was the powerful force behind getting rid of the dangerous people: the guy, the immigrants who hang around in bars. If you were a rich banker living in Westchester County, you could get any kind of wine or liquor you wanted. If you were a poor immigrant and lived in New York, you would get arrested and thrown into jail. Well, what happened when prohibition ended? Harry J. Anslinger, the head of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, had nothing to do, so they launched a huge propaganda campaign trying to show that marijuana was a killer. There were Senate hearings with lurid presentations, so-called doctors coming in and talking about the hideous things that would happen to you if you smoked a joint, and so on. It just so happened that marijuana was being used by the dangerous classes - Harlem blacks, working-class people. So, let's go after marijuana, let's make that the enemy. Then it's one after another, but I think Nixon was probably the last president to have had any semi-reasonable element in this drug program.

So, if you want to solve the Mexican cartel problem, overcome the drug crisis in the United States, which is where it's coming to, and stop the crazed gun culture, which is out of control with hundreds of millions of guns in the United States, you need to take action. The far-right Supreme Court has turned the Second Amendment into holy writ. When you ask people what's in the Constitution, the first thing they'll say is the Second Amendment. In the modern form, the form that was created by Justice Antonin Scalia in 2008, before that, the Second Amendment meant what it said - in order to have a well-regulated militia, don't restrict arms.

Now, it's changed.

Clarence Thomas's view of the United States is a hateful, murderous society. His view is that you can't walk in the streets without having an armory, and you need it because this is such a horrible society. That was the latest decision on the New York law to try to restrict guns on the street. Now, everybody has to have lots of guns. A six-year-old kid has to walk down the street with an assault rifle because who knows what'll happen next?

When you create that kind of culture, you're going to be overflowing with guns, schools are going to become the most dangerous places in the country, and it'll flow into Mexico where the drug cartels are delighted to have a cheap source of guns.

The actual figures, we don't really know, but most studies show that at least the majority of the guns in Mexico come from the United States. Mexico itself has pretty tight gun laws. You can't just walk into a store and buy a gun as you can where I live in Arizona. But with the United States right next door, not much in the way of border controls to the south, you can import guns, you can export drugs, and then, well, we know the answer. But it's here in the United States. Mexico itself can't do very much.

The Russia-Ukraine War

Levy: Wow, thank you, Professor. It seems that it's an interesting idea – that we have to tackle the drug crisis from our end of the equation rather than trying to solve it for Mexico.

Moving on, last year we also had an in-depth conversation regarding the Ukraine-Russia crisis, which has continued to escalate up until today. We've seen President Biden recently go to Ukraine to meet with President Zelensky, and there are ongoing threats of nuclear escalation with the removal of the nuclear treaty. Our listeners wanted me to ask you for your current update and perspective on the conflict, and where do you think it's going from this point on?

Chomsky: Side comment before I get into it, how many presidents or high officials visited Baghdad when the United States was demolishing? Zero.

In fact, the peace activists in Iraq were ordered to leave because life was so impossible under the U.S attack. Does that tell you something? It does. Something you're not allowed to talk about. It's called whataboutism.

Okay, it's a way of deflecting attention from what is highly important and recognized throughout certainly throughout the global South, but even in Europe. The hypocrisy is just beyond shocking, and it's having an effect. Well, what's happening in Ukraine? The war is escalating. Ukraine is suffering bitterly, with a huge number of casualties. The Ukrainian Army has been apparently virtually destroyed, with no young recruits well-trained, and huge casualties on the Russian side.

Civilian casualties? We don't know the details. The United Nations estimates 7,000, which is surely a serious underestimate. Maybe twice or three times that many. Pretty serious. I mean, it's not a wreck; it's not the American kind of war, but it's bad enough. And it can increase. Now, it's tanks. It's beginning to be jet planes.

The American military has actually directed the fire of the advanced weapons by Mars and others that are being used. The world, most of the world, sees this as a proxy war between Russia and the United States fought over Ukrainian bodies. And it's becoming harder and harder to avoid that conclusion. If the war continues to escalate, Ukraine will be some of the economies severely harmed. I mean, not like Iraq or Libya or targets of American attack, but bad enough.

The seriousness is going to get worse pretty soon. Increase the tax, jet planes, and so on. Russia will probably retaliate by a harsher attack against Western Ukraine against supply lines run to conflicts with NATO. At that point, you're moving up the escalation ladder to terminal war.

Putin has made statements, inflammatory statements about nuclear weapons in reserve, suspended participation in the New START Treaty. All of this is very dangerous. I should say it's equally dangerous, the way it's escalating in China. We don't talk about it much, but we should. But all of this is quite serious. U.S. policy in Ukraine remains stable: the war must continue in order to severely weaken Russia.

That's a policy written in the United States, which is a virtual satellite in the United States now. Britain and the United States actually intervened directly last March and April to urge Ukraine not to move towards negotiations. Negotiations were going on with Russia under Turkish auspices. They broke down. We don't know exactly why, but Britain and the US were very clear that we're not ready for negotiation. To them, still not the official stand. Remains fight the war to severely weaken Russia.

If you think about it just from a practical point of view, it's kind of sadistic, but people are in fact talking about it to bargain for the United States that a small fraction of the huge military budget the United States is severely degrading the military forces of its main military enemy. That's being openly discussed now in the United States, and Britain pointing this out. It's pretty obvious whether that's a factor or not you can debate, but it's certainly a fact.

The United States, in fact, if you look around, almost the entire world is suffering from this. Ukraine most but Africa, Asia, and curtailment of food and fertilizer shipments are having a big effect. Europe is declining even moving towards industrialization because of its breaking of its natural trade commercial relations with Russia. The whole German-based very successful European industrial system was based on interactions with the East and Russia. Russia doesn't have much of an economy, it's about the size of Mexico, but it's very rich in resources, minerals and oil. All the essentials for West European industry are collapsing.

All over the world decline, one exception, the US is doing brilliantly. It's degrading the forces of its enemy at very low cost, fossil fuel companies are just euphoric with the huge profits that come. Germany's importing the quad national grass from the United States and far higher costs and it could get cheaply from Russia and arms manufacturers they're doing great. Food monopolies there's food. The Global Food system is half a dozen companies raising prices, profits going through this roof, it's very successful in many ways.

Now, how long will Europe agree to accept this? I don't know, we do know what's happening in the global Zone.

The refusal of many countries to participate in the United States' efforts to isolate Russia and China has become very dramatic. This was highlighted at an international conference in Munich a couple of weeks ago. The United States Vice President Harris and other representatives were desperately trying to get the countries of the South to join the United States in the world. However, one after another, they refused, saying, "Mother's your world, we don't pay any attention to your hypocritical proclamations. We know exactly what they mean. We've suffered from your savagery for centuries. Stop lecturing to us. We're not going to take part in this. We're going to make our own regulation on our commercial and other religion arrangements with Russia and particularly with China. You don't like it too bad." Even long-time U.S allies like Colombia simply flatly refused. Brazil said, "That's not our woman." While it is unknown what Mexico said, it was probably something similar. Asia, India, Indonesia said, "I'm sorry. We continue in our own way."

The United States is quite isolated, with the English-speaking countries and for the time being, Continental Europe centrally isolated. Probably, in 90% of the countries in the world, the sanctions are not observed. Meanwhile, China is moving ahead with its loan development investment projects and also moving ahead diplomatically. It just threw a major wrench in long-term U.S policy in the Middle East by arranging the Saudi-Iranian negotiations. This is a severe blow to the United States' control of the Middle East, which has been a crime concern of U.S foreign policy. Now, China comes in, and the United States is working very hard to put together an alliance of the most reactionary states in the region in conflict with Iran. It's called the Abraham Accords. The United States was supposed to applaud it and see it as wonderful, but it's actually a reactionary alliance subordinated to the United States aimed at Iran. China just dismantled it, took the main element Saudi Arabia, which was not technically a member of the Accords but was basically part of it. Now, the main source of oil has been pulled into the Chinese system, and that had already happened with the United Arab Emirates, the other major state.

The "they're just refusing to participate" situation became very dramatic at the International Conference in Munich a couple of weeks ago. It was a strategic conference, and the United States Vice President Harris was there, with other representatives desperately trying to get the countries of the South to join the United States in the world. However, one after another, they said, "We don't pay any attention to your hypocritical proclamations. We know exactly what they mean. We've suffered from your savagery for centuries. Stop lecturing to us. We're not going to take part in this. We're going to make our own regulations on our commercial and other religious arrangements with Russia and particularly with China. You don't like it too bad” but even a long-time U.S ally like Colombia simply flatly refused.

Brazil said, 'No, that's not our problem.' I don't know what Mexico said, but probably something similar. Asia, India, Indonesia, I'm sorry, we continue on our way. The United States is quite isolated. The Anglos, the English-speaking countries, and for the time being, Continental Europe centrally isolated. Probably 90% of the countries in the world don't even observe the sanctions. Meanwhile, China is moving ahead with its loan development investment projects. Also, moving ahead diplomatically, it just threw a major wrench in long-term U.S policy in the Middle East by arranging the Saudi-Iranian negotiations. It's a very severe blow to the United States. Control of the Middle East has been a crime concern of U.S foreign

policy. It's not the southern real government. Now China comes in. The United States was working very hard to put together an alliance of the most reactionary states in the region in a conflict with Iran. It's called the Abraham Accords. The United States was supposed to applaud it. It was wonderful. It's actually a reactionary Alliance subordinated to the United States aimed at Iran. China just dismantled it. It took the main element. Saudi Arabia was not technically a member of the Accords but basically part of it. Now that means the main source of oil pulled into the Chinese system that had already happened with the internet in the Arab Emirates, the other major state.

China has two major development programs for Eurasia. There's what's called the new Silk Road which goes through the Eurasian countries, and there's also a maritime silk route that runs along the South through these seas. One of the hubs is the United Arab Emirates, the main, along with Saudi Arabia, the main USA in the region, the hub of the maritime Silk Road of China. These things are all taking place, and the U.S can't stop them with guns. That's the U.S comparative advantage, military force, but it doesn't stop these things. They continue, and the world is moving towards complicated reconstruction. The Ukraine war has, as part of it, the Korean War has driven, I mean, apart from the criminality of the aggression, a major crime. It's also criminally stupid from Putin's point of view. He gave the United States its fondest wish, Europe, on a silver platter. Instead of an accommodation between Russia and Germany to the benefit of both, it could drive Europe into the hands of Washington, and Russia moves to the east. We don't have the details of the latest meeting of China and Russia a couple of days ago, but what's leaking out indicates probably that the part of it is economic policies developing Chinese development of industrial projects in eastern Siberia and access to the rich mineral resources of Eastern Siberia. That's very likely as Russia's most of East Europe sits in the pocket of the United States and declines.

India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Brazil are all going in their own direction, which seems to be the way the world is moving. The US has one overwhelmingly powerful weapon - violence - but it doesn't work very well in this situation. In fact, the US is moving towards China, and it has now expanded NATO to the Indo-Pacific region. The last NATO Summit meeting declared that the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean are part of the North Atlantic, and now the Indo-Pacific organization is drawing Europe into the conflict that the US is escalating with China.

It's both military and commercial, and the Biden administration has quite openly declared an economic war against China, trying to prevent China's economic development by withholding advanced technology and trying to force countries like the Netherlands, South Korea, and Japan to break off their relations with China, which is their main market for advanced technology. We don't actually know if they will accept this. The Netherlands, for example, is the main industry in the world for crucial parts of the development of semiconductors. Will they agree to lose their major market because the US told them to? Maybe. If so, they will go into decline. If not, the world changes.

I think all of these things are right on the border, and the top US general (I have forgotten his name) just a couple of weeks ago predicted that there would be a US-China war within two years. There can't be a US-China war - both countries would be destroyed - but the people, generals, and Congress talk about it as if it's a possibility. It's very casual to talk about nuclear wars, which is utterly shocking.
Dan Ellsberg, who is suffering from terminal cancer, is still trying to alert the world to the incredible and unbelievable stupidity of even thinking about nuclear wars. It's being discussed as if it's some kind of possibility, and Putin is throwing his own oil on the fire. This is what we're hurtling towards, including environmental catastrophe. It's the most dangerous time in human history. well yeah it's a very like you say it's—

Artificial intelligence

Levy: It’s very concerning that we are just casually talking about a nuclear war and casually Chomsky on Artificial Intelligence.

Talking about the world transitioning from a unipolar order to a multipolar order, I was going to ask for your thoughts on the China-Russia diplomatic developments, but you have already answered that very thoroughly. It is concerning that nuclear war is being discussed casually even among friends in this time we live in.

Moving on to an article you wrote on artificial intelligence in the last couple of weeks, it got me thinking about your thoughts on the future, which is rapidly approaching for many of us. My generation has to transition and adapt to a world where AI could take all of our jobs. For our listeners who haven't read your article on ChatGPT on Artificial Intelligence, what are your thoughts on its dangers? Not only in terms of taking jobs, but also building a more dangerous world for all of us with its potential threats. Chomsky: Well, we should first recognize that a huge amount of discussion about ChatGPT and other devices is completely groundless. These systems are designed in such a way that, in principle, they can tell us nothing about language, learning, intelligence, or thought. They do some very sophisticated programming, but basically, it comes down to sophisticated high-tech plagiarism. In a certain way, it's glorified autofill. It's a way of making up a good guess about what your next word ought to be in a sequence of words. If you do this with an astronomical database, extraordinary databases, supercomputers, and a couple of billion parameters, you get something that looks pretty much like normal language use.

The program is quite sophisticated, so you don't choose the most probable next word because if you did that, it would look kind of bland and not very interesting. So you pick a lower probability word, which is a little bit surprising, and that makes it give the false impression that something's happening. As far as I know, there is no constructive purpose for this technology yet. But it's very dangerous in many ways, not so much in taking jobs, which may happen in the long term, but I don't think it's a major thing. It's dangerous in other ways.

For one thing, people take it seriously. There are cases where people think they're talking to these devices, and they ask questions like they would to Alexa. You ask Alexa, "Should I leave my wife?" or something like that. Well, that's Alexa, and you don't pay that much attention if it's a chat, but you do pay attention. There are already documented cases of people getting deluded into believing these things are real. Thomas Friedman had an article in the New York Times about it in which he wasn't criticizing it,

he was accepting it, saying, "Oh my God, it's Promethean, the greatest advance ever." Well, people fall for it, and it can cause them a lot of problems.

It's also a terrific technique of defamation and disinformation, and that's already being used, especially when you combine it with artificial image creation, which is not very hard. You can put somebody's name under it and create fantastic defamation. There are massive ways of disinformation, and as soon as it gets with Bots and organized societies behind it, it'll be a flood. All of this can be extremely dangerous, with no scientific interest or intellectual interest, but it does have the potential for major effects.

It's conceivable that it might replace some work, like routine coding or something like that, but it's a very threatening and dangerous development.

Levy: Professor, yeah, counter to all the hype surrounding Chad GPT and artificial intelligence, it's crucial to recognize the potential dangers of these technologies without proper regulation and oversight. The implications of fake images and hidden information are just a few examples of the many threats that could arise. These conversations must continue to address and mitigate these risks.

On that note, I'm aware that our time is coming to a close, Professor. We may need to wrap up soon.

How To Bring Back Optimism In Our Society

So, my last question goes back to your reminiscing of the 1930s and how you mentioned that the times during your childhood were ones of optimism, and how to build a future that we can all strive towards. It seems that in today's conversations, political climates, and society, the focus is on how we can become more divided and less optimistic about the future, with a more dystopian vision. Professor, my last question for you is: How do you think we can reconcile our differences in American society in this bipartisan environment we find ourselves in, and how can we get back to that optimistic vision of the future?

Chomsky: I think we know exactly how to do it.

You go back to the Obama years, not very far. The message was hope and change. "We can do it" brought in a lot of people. A lot of the working class that's now voting for Trump was voting for Obama. They took the words seriously. The actions didn't coincide with the words. The actions betrayed people. It was just rhetoric. "You voted for me, and I'll go home. I'll continue working for the rich and powerful."

What's the answer? Take it seriously and do it. It can be done. Let's take the financial crisis of 2008. Let's be concrete. One of the things that happened was that the government virtually nationalized the auto industry, which was collapsing. The government took it over. What did they do? They built up the owners, put them back in their positions, maybe new faces, but the same class and set them to redoing what they had been doing - producing more automobiles, more SUVs.

There was an alternative handed over to the workforce, handed over to the communities, let it be run by the people and workers in Detroit, not rich bankers in New York. Have them produce things that the country needs, like mass transportation, not more SUVs. There was a possibility. It wasn't thought about because we were not organized, active, militant enough to make that an issue. Okay, let's do it. Let's make it an issue. Let's say yes, these things are possible. That's one example. There are a thousand more examples.

Another example is taking over the fossil fuel industries. In fact, you can even buy them at market prices. The government could. It wouldn't be more than the bailouts for the financial industry. Turn them to sustainable energy. It can be done. The workforce isn't even interested. In West Virginia, coal state, United Mind Workers has accepted a transition program. My friend and colleague Robert Pollan in his group, the very group, has been working on this in the ground. Working-class people who said, "Okay, we can imagine moving to a transition program away from coal towards capping the mines, developing sustainable energy, better jobs, better communities, better life." The coal baron representative, Joe Manchin, doesn't want to hear about it. Of course, the coal and fossil fuel industries don't want to hear about it, but these things are on the verge of possibility, and there are many more like them. You can think case after case.

Well, those are the reasons to be optimistic. There are these opportunities. Can it be achieved? Who knows? Can't tell until you try. It's like negotiations in Ukraine. If you don't try, nothing will happen. If you do try, maybe it'll fail, maybe it'll succeed. The same with everything else.

Levy: Professor, thank you for that answer and for this enlightening conversation. I'm sure our listeners will find it very insightful, as with the previous ones. I'm looking forward to having more conversations with you in the future and getting your insights on our world, ourselves, and how to become more optimistic and active in building our society for the better. Thank you so much for joining me, Professor.

Chomsky: I'm very glad to be with you.